This really puts some perspective on things. He’s clearly a goa’uld.

I’ve come to think of myself as trying to be outside of the social constructs that America is currently shedding.

I see society as layered. A social fabric that we weave by acting our beliefs within our communities, which layers atop nature. Upon that we build a structure of law, order, and an artificial economy that we see as beneficial in maintaining a healthy society. It’s important that these three layers closely conform to each other, and that the structures at the top remain minimalistic and efficient in their alignment to the fabric itself, which is more organic.

But the structure has become unwieldly, and is being used against us. It confines us. It enslaves us. The vast majority of people are acting out against this, and their actions are colored by their upbringings and beliefs combined with propaganda. Our diversity is being amplified through anger at our situation, the hate of the propaganda (edit: not ‘of the propaganda’, ‘generated from the propaganda’ is better), and the greed that has become systemic.

Then there are the people who seek to rule us. To some degree they recognize that they can manipulate a failing system to take absolute control. They’ve figured out that they can control us by our anger, and turn it into hate and greed. (edit: I should add that even these people are a symptom of the sickness, and while they may seek to perpetuate it, they’re not themselves the root cause)

Right, left… it doesn’t matter. The whole system is coming down. There’s a lot more to that, but as it stands… there’s a reason a lot of us feel driven to go live on a mountain top or in the depths of the forest. It’s a withdrawal from an unjust system. But we still need the social fabric, it’s our substrate that makes us who we are. We need to embrace our communities, locally, and focus on making the lives we want everyone to be able to have as we eventually pull through this period of authoritarian fascism.

Now if only I could get a meaningful reply to a bug preventing complete account deletion, either on github or from support. It seems they modeled their support structure on Google’s.

I think they care about their customers just about as much as they care about making money, and aside from GOG, the competition simply does not. It’s a pretty good demonstration to how capitalism has failed us, to be honest, because any of those competitors would have been able to compete if they hadn’t treated their customers like shit.

I’ve been using Thinkpads since the X61s, and used the trackpoint extensively back in the day. Hell, I had the X61s that didn’t even have a trackpoint(edit: didn’t have a trackpad), and I rarely used a mouse with it.

But I really don’t understand how anyone still uses the thing extensively. Once in awhile I’ll use it for some bit of specific precision work when I don’t have a mouse handy. I feel like the Trackpoint quality has gone down significantly over the years, and stuff like anti-drift seems to have been neglected.

If not for the horrible arrow keys that I already hate on my Macbook Air, I was all for this transition. I’d much rather have a great trackpad at this point. I want something more compact than a Framework, and I’m comfortable with Lenovo’s Linux support at this point.

What’s more, it’s attaching strongly negative feelings to a positive change. As a result, it’s driving the wedge down the middle of our society as deep as it can possibly go.

You catch more flies with honey, and you can also use it to heal wounds.

Wish I had a choice, at work. Technically I can run Linux or MacOS, but I’d need to run a Windows VM for a few things anyway.

TLoU scratched a lot of the same itches, for me.

As someone who works for a very large company, on a team with around 500 people around the world, this is what concerns me. Our team will not be 500 people in a few years, and if it is, it’s because usage of our product has grown substantially. We are buying heavily into AI, and yet people are buying it when our leadership teams claim it will not impact jobs.

Will I be able to take a unit of 2 people down to 0 people? No, I’ve never seen a process where I could eliminate every human.

Socially speaking, this is also very concerning to me. I’m afraid that implementation of AI will be yet another thing that makes it difficult for smaller businesses to compete in a global marketplace. Yes, a tech-minded company can leverage a smaller head count into more capabilities, but this typically requires more expensive and limiting turnkey solutions, or major investment into developers of a customized solution.

I don’t think it’s the noise cancelling, I think it’s that headset manufacturers think gamers all want big boomy bass. My Sennheiser Momentum 4 have noise cancelling, and aren’t boomy in the slightest.

I also don’t think that it’s the closed back, though closed back are certainly capable of better bass than open back. My Audeze Maxwell also do not have boomy bass, and the Momentums are also closed back.

All that said, I agree that the sound quality of most gaming headsets is a mess, and I also prefer open back headphones. I don’t want to deal with cables anymore, though, so I’m hopeful that we start getting some nice open back headphones and headsets.

I love my Audeze Maxwell. I use it to listen to music all day while I work, and jump on calls throughout the day. It has excellent sound quality, and a built in mic that works very well. When there’s background noise, I pop in the boom mic and that mic’s noise cancellation is great. It also provides a little better clarity.

There’s both a 2.4ghz wireless dongle (which I plug into my monitor), bluetooth (which I use with my phone using LDAC), USB, and 3.5mm connectivity.

The battery life is excellent. I charge it weekly, and I really don’t need to.

They offer an Xbox and Playstation version. The Xbox version comes with an Atmos license, the Playstation version supports Tempest 3D sound.

The sizing adjustments aren’t great, there’s no telescoping of the ear cups. It just has a sling with three adjustments, by popping it into three different sets of screw holes. It’s ok, but not great, and it’s not the kind of thing you want to move back and forth, say, if you wear hats sometimes, because those holes will wear out. You aren’t supposed to remove the screws.

It’s also closed back, which is not my preference. I don’t have background noise, I don’t care about isolation. I prefer the sound of open backs, and they also provide more spatial awareness if you want to place footsteps.

Also, being closed back, and having a not so great ear pad material, they get fairly toasty. There are third party ear pads that improve upon this, but you can only do so much with a closed back can.

I’ll go ahead and pre-dial 911.

We don’t even have it on desktop, yet. I wouldn’t use them as much as I do at work, where I use them to actively manage dynamic workflows. But it sure would be nice to be able to collapse some shopping tabs I typically have open, into one pinned tab group, or researching various projects.

Once they do it, I sure hope they put some more thought into how pinned tab groups should behave. They should either be to the left of all pinned tabs, or between pinned tabs and unpinned tabs. It drives me crazy in Edge, how new tabs tend to open to the left of my pinned tab groups.

Actually, I exclusively use Firefox Focus on my phone, so I don’t really care there. But I do wish they’d get out of this half-assed support for tabs, there. Just let me create new tabs without long pressing links. Maybe put a limit on number of tabs to 3 or 5. I’d also love to have a “send to desktop” option, without having to go to regular Firefox and tab sync.

A lack of government regulation would not be good for them, because it would empower their competition, and that’s the last thing they want.

This is how they do it when there is some regulation, they abuse the regulation. But without regulation, they would be free to destroy the competition with unlimited anti-competitive practices.

To me, the big problem with libertarianism is that it requires a big level of maturity from the population. It requires private regulatory and certification companies, union of workers to seek working rights in a non-violent way, and people to support charity initiatives that help the poor and endangered. All of that is not impossible, but people are very used to that being a government responsibility, it won’t happen over night

This is the problem with every philosophy, it’s an ideal that someone dreamed up. Over the last 100 years or so, we’ve lost a lot of self-sufficiency as individuals and communities, but also made some progress in other areas like civil rights. It’s a constantly changing landscape, with stronger and weaker among us, and different people trying to help or take advantage. So I agree, nothing can happen overnight, and no single social or political philosophy can be directly implemented, successfully. These philosophies should be seen as altruistic goals, with a series of challenges that society faces along the path.

Those challenges are why I’m concerned with our vilification of past failures. We can learn from those failures, and borrow the good ideas, to address challenges going forward. Knowledge of the past allows us to adapt to the future, and create a system that truly suits what we become.

But if we don’t start caring for our neighbors, as well as those across the globe, we’re lost. My morning cup of coffee, or pack of cheap t-shirts, should not lead to someone living in poverty. Likewise, my purchasing it should not enrich some individual too far above others.

Yeah, and to be fair, I have no problem with folks being what makes them happy. But the, uhh… enthusiasm makes it hard to avoid.

Oh thank god, I’m so sick of blocking furry communities. Damned things multiply like rabbits.

Then people are wrong, and we should correct them. Left wing libertarians stand in direct opposition to capitalism, and have more in common with true right wing libertarians than the extremist capitalists who are taking over the mind space of the philosophy.

This is the far right libertarianism, which has essentially become an extremist, authoritarian form of capitalism. In essence, those with immense power tell us that nobody has any right to oversight and regulation over others. Their power becomes insurmountable, and their control over the economy becomes absolute. We live according to the standards they provide, because we have no alternative.

Every system of government becomes corrupted like this when thieves and liars take control. This is not libertarianism, it is simply the flavor of authoritarianism this go 'round.

Real liberterianism comes in many forms, along the left to right spectrum. On the left, there is a belief in redistribution of natural resources to the community. Personally, I believe we should be embracing local cooperatives for food, energy, medical care, and beyond. On the right, there is more allowance for imbalance by embracing business to drive innovation. Those who innovate succeed, and accrue wealth. But a true libertarian should support a near 100% estate tax, which would limit the imbalance, because you should have what you’ve earned for yourself.

The thing that we lost that leads libertarianism to fail, is our sense of community, a sense of humanity. A responsibility when you see your neighbors suffering, to help them. Once the rich went off to live in their ivory towers, they lost sight of the rest of us.

I don’t see how any system could succeed, considering the circumstances.

[Edit] And honestly, we need to stop vilifying entire philosophies because they were previously corrupted. Just because communism was implemented in a manner that oppressed millions, doesn’t mean there is no good to the philosophies behind it and socialism.

We should be borrowing the good from everything, and remembering the bad. A blanket condemnation of failed experiments makes both impossible. No singular philosophy will be effective in this imperfect world, only in theory is that level of refinement possible.

I agree. I have privacy concerns, but ultimately, I think I care more about freedom and open source. I have very real concerns about the rise of authoritarianism in America, and I’m trying to balance that against a preference for more open services like mailbox.org and fastmail.

I was thinking someone is finally making T’rain.